Israel demolishes Palestinian residential apartment buildings in East Jerusalem

Local sources in Jerusalem said that Israeli forces, accompanied by a bulldozer and a truck, stormed into the Issawiya village - the Jabal al-Mukaber neighbourhood in the occupied city - and began to besiege the centre of the village before demolishing a two-story apartment building in al-Masouda Street.

A building on the nearby al-Wad Street in the same neighbourhood was also destroyed.

The demolitions were carried out under the pretext of not having a permit, which are near impossible for Palestinians to obtain.

Four out of five of Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem live under the poverty line, and applying for building permits comes with various taxes and fees amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.

Translation: Occupation bulldozers demolish a house in the village of Issawiya in occupied Jerusalem.

As a result, only seven percent of Jerusalem building permits have been allocated to Palestinian neighbourhoods in the past few years.

Applications for building permits are also known to take years to be processed, giving Israeli courts a loophole to increase Palestinian home demolitions by branding structures as "illegal".

Jerusalem has been a target of illegal Israeli settlements and home demolitions amid a wider plan to annex the Palestinian part of the city.